Water Supply and Natural Gas Deliverability — The Screening Fields Most Cities Leave Blank

Electrical capacity has become a known preparation priority. After five years of data-center and EV-plant coverage, most ED directors understand that a site selector's intake form will ask for available megawatts, voltage, redundancy, and timeline. Many have already pulled a service letter from their electric utility.

Water and gas have not gotten the same attention. Most tier-3 cities assume adequacy and never document it. California's GO-Biz intake form asks for water in gallons per day, natural gas in thousands of cubic feet per hour and monthly therms, and required delivery pressure in PSI. It structures water and gas as separate required sections rather than folding them into a single "utilities" line. Against those fields, "we have good water" is a blank. The form wants a number at a named location under stated conditions.

The Site Selectors Guild's May 2025 infrastructure panel listed what communities should have on hand: water supply, treatment capacity, distribution, gas line size, extension plans, rate schedules, service maps. Communities that cannot produce those "quickly and transparently" drop out before substantive conversation begins.

What follows covers both utilities — what gets asked, what a passing answer contains, and how the requirements split by process type. The prescriptive sections are built to be forwarded. A water superintendent or gas engineer reading them cold should be able to act without any context from this publication.

What water screening actually asks

"Our treatment plant can handle 8 MGD" answers a question the selector did not ask. The selector asked what the system delivers to a specific parcel: at what pressure, at what flow rate, under peak-demand conditions, with what surplus, and on what schedule if extension is required.

The Select Tennessee certified-site criteria spell out the fields a water utility letter has to address: ability and willingness to serve, line size, nearest tank distance and volume, static and residual pressure, treatment headroom, reserve capacity. Where infrastructure sits more than 500 feet from the site, the program requires an engineered extension plan covering design, cost, construction schedule, right-of-way control, utility approval, and identified funding.

That is the floor. A project-specific answer that survives screening states:

Supply source and capacity. Source type, withdrawal or purchase authority, firm yield, treatment capacity, maximum-day system demand, committed but unconnected demand, adopted operating margin, and the surplus remaining for the stated project profile.

At the parcel. Supplying main diameter, looped or dead-end configuration, connection point, static pressure, modeled or tested residual pressure, flow at the stated residual, test or model date, system operating assumptions during the test, and any separate fire-pump or storage requirement.

Extension conditions. Scope of main extension, looping, pumping, or storage work; design status; easements; permitting; cost responsibility; funding status; schedule.

Commitment level. Whether capacity is informational, conditionally available, reserved, or committed; deposit or agreement required; competing-demand conditions; expiration date; events requiring revalidation.

Readers of "Your Answer Gets Graded, Not Your Site" will recognize the commitment ladder here. Treatment-plant capacity is rung 2, a verified fact about the system. A letter testing a named demand at a named parcel under stated conditions, with the utility's commitment terms attached, is rung 4 or 5. A screen that requires a project-specific determination will not accept the plant number, however accurate it is.

Water requirements vary by what you are manufacturing

There is no defensible "typical" water consumption for a 100,000-square-foot industrial building. Two facilities in the same sector can differ by an order of magnitude on equipment configuration, cooling method, sanitation cycle, and recycling alone. What the sources do establish is which questions matter for which processes.

Wet-process food and beverage. Demand tracks production volume, sanitation requirements, and operating schedule. EPA's 2023 meat and poultry analysis found many plants run eight to ten hours of processing followed by six to eight hours of sanitation, with cleanup producing a concentrated water and wastewater load. A daily total tells the utility nothing about required peak-hour supply.

Federally inspected establishments must use water meeting National Primary Drinking Water Regulations. Product-specific quality requirements — hardness, chlorine residual, TDS, temperature — come from the prospect, not from the utility. Document average-day and maximum-day supply, peak-hour capacity, potable compliance, and discharge capacity including BOD, TSS, fats/oils/grease, and pretreatment. The discharge side got its own treatment in "Wastewater Discharge Compatibility."

Surface treatment and metal finishing. Rinse configuration and recycling drive the number. EPA's engineering work on electroplating found the same plating operation requiring 132,000 gallons per hour with a single rinse and 126 gallons per hour with a three-stage countercurrent rinse — better than 1,000 to 1 for identical production output. Discharge documentation matters more than supply documentation for this sector. Categorical pretreatment standards under 40 C.F.R. Part 433 are federally enforceable whether or not the local POTW has reproduced them in a local permit. A prospect running electroplating, anodizing, or chemical etching asks about categorical status, local limits, and pretreatment before it asks about supply.

Precision machining and metalworking. Cooling configuration dominates. DOE reports that single-pass cooling can require roughly 40 times the water of a cooling tower for the same heat load. A dry-machining shop with closed-loop cooling may have negligible process-water demand. A similarly sized plant using single-pass cooling or aqueous finishing does not. Document cooling-tower make-up capacity, parts-washing discharge, and whether the discharge triggers Metal Products and Machinery standards under Part 438.

Thermal processing, ceramics, and glass. A dry kiln or furnace may use very little process water. Glass finishing, wet scrubbers, quenching, pickling, and enameling can each create regulated wastewater streams. EPA's Glass Manufacturing and Porcelain Enameling guidelines cover different subcategories under different requirements, including no-discharge provisions for certain glass processes. Do not assume low demand without knowing the specific finishing and emission-control operations.

In every one of these cases the prospect's equipment list sets the water profile, not the sector label. Document what the system delivers at the parcel and let the prospect test its own load against it.

Fire flow is a parcel-level number

A city with ample treatment capacity can still fail a fire-flow test at a candidate site. Distribution path, main size, hydrant configuration, and concurrent demand limit what actually arrives at the location.

The ISO methodology calculates needed fire flow from construction type, effective area, occupancy combustibility, and exposure from adjacent buildings. The 2024 International Fire Code Appendix B produces required flows of 1,500 to 8,000 GPM for two to four hours, based on construction type and fire-flow calculation area. Both evaluate at 20 PSI residual. A qualifying NFPA 13 sprinkler system changes the math — ISO applies a 1,000 GPM minimum for a sprinklered building, and the IFC permits a 75% reduction from the table value subject to that same minimum — but the sprinkler design follows from the building, its contents, and its storage arrangement.

The hydrant-test fields, and the difference between the selector's fire screen and the insurer's loss-control review, are in "Fire and Flood Get Screened Twice." For present purposes: have a parcel-level result in hand before the RFI arrives. A hydrant flow test or hydraulic model identifying test hydrants, supplying main, static pressure, residual pressure, observed flow, calculated flow at 20 PSI residual, test date, and system operating conditions during the test.

Natural gas deliverability, pressure, and service class

Gas screening asks three things most directors cannot answer from existing documentation: maximum hourly deliverability at the delivery point, required pressure, and service terms.

Monthly and annual consumption figures do not touch the first question. Mains, regulators, and meters are sized around peak hourly conditions and required pressure. A facility with modest annual volume that fires multiple furnaces simultaneously during a production cycle can exceed the hourly capacity of the serving infrastructure while its monthly bill looks unremarkable.

Pressure varies by utility, not by national standard

There is no national industrial gas-pressure classification. PHMSA defines high-pressure and low-pressure distribution relationally, by whether the main operates above what is delivered to the customer, without assigning universal PSI boundaries. Utilities set their own delivery standards. Charlottesville Gas delivers at 7 inches water column, roughly 0.25 PSI, as standard, and requires written justification for anything higher. Enbridge Gas Ohio's application offers pressure selections of 4 ounces, 2 PSI, 5 PSI, or "other."

The screening field is minimum and maximum acceptable pressure at the meter under coincident peak conditions, plus pressure stability. Equipment specifications establish that requirement, not a process label.

What gas screening means by target sector

Operating permits show why square-footage-based gas ranges are indefensible, and why the critical fields shift by sector.

Heat treatment. A Pennsylvania heat-treatment facility is permitted for three furnaces totaling 46 MMBtu/hour, roughly 44 Mcf/hour with all three firing. Maximum coincident hourly demand and pressure stability under load are the fields that matter. Furnace gas trains specify a minimum inlet pressure and an allowable fluctuation band; a pressure drop during a ramp cycle can damage the workpiece or the equipment. Interruption mid-cycle destroys in-process material, which makes firm service and plant-protection provisions operationally necessary. Cities targeting this sector need a gas letter that tests a coincident hourly load with multiple furnaces firing, and that states curtailment priority and plant-protection treatment.

Ceramics and glass. A Georgia ceramics operation is permitted for two process boilers at 9.8 MMBtu/hour each, about 19 Mcf/hour combined. Continuous kiln operations require sustained high-volume delivery across extended firing periods, and startup fuel loads can run above steady state. The letter should address sustained-peak deliverability, pressure stability for combustion control, and whether the serving main carries the load profile without reinforcement.

Food processing. An Arkansas poultry processor is permitted for ovens, fryers, water heaters, and thermal-fluid heaters ranging from 1.3 to 17 MMBtu/hour per unit. Plant peak depends on how many units fire concurrently during production and sanitation, and those peaks may not coincide, producing a load shape the utility has to evaluate against hourly distribution capacity. Firm service matters because interruption during food processing creates spoilage and food-safety exposure beyond lost production time.

General manufacturing and warehouse. Where gas load is space heating, make-up air, and water heating, standard-pressure service at modest volume is usually sufficient, and gas rarely surfaces as a first-cut constraint. Confirm serving-main capacity and the rate schedule anyway before treating the field as a pass.

Firm versus interruptible service

FERC describes firm interstate pipeline service as the highest-quality service: reservation charge plus usage charge, generally not subject to planned interruption. Interruptible transportation is lower priority, carries a one-part usage charge, and may be interrupted when capacity is unavailable.

Those are interstate transportation definitions. Retail classifications, notice requirements, and curtailment priorities come from the serving utility's tariff and applicable state rules. Virginia's curtailment rules show how the distinctions work in practice: residential and human-needs customers hold protected priority, while customers with alternate-fuel capability get curtailed earlier. Virginia defines plant-protection gas narrowly, as the minimum required to prevent physical harm or damage to in-process material, and expressly excludes gas needed to maintain production.

Document the actual tariffed service class, curtailment priority, interruption triggers, notice provisions, alternate-fuel requirements, restoration priority, and whether firm capacity is presently available at the delivery point.

What to request from the gas utility

The letter should state:

Delivery point and capacity. Existing main size and operating pressure, available hourly and peak-day deliverability at the delivery point, regulator and meter requirements, and the study assumptions behind those figures.

Service terms. Firm, interruptible, or blended; tariff and rate schedule; curtailment priority; notice period; alternate-fuel requirements; plant-protection treatment; restoration conditions; penalties.

Extension or reinforcement. Required main extension, reinforcement, regulator station, or meter set; easements and permits; design or study gates; cost allocation between utility and customer; schedule. Enbridge Gas Ohio advises at least 12 weeks for planning and roughly six months where a main extension is involved.

Commitment level. Whether the conclusion is preliminary, utility-studied, reserved, or contractually committed; deposit or service agreement required; competing-load conditions; expiration; revalidation triggers.

In "Map the Counterparties Before the RFI Arrives" I characterized gas as less commonly a first-cut screening issue than electric capacity. That holds for general manufacturing and warehouse uses on standard-pressure service. It does not hold for thermal-process industries where hourly peak and delivery pressure are project-critical. If the target list includes heat treatment, ceramics, glass, or food processing with large fired equipment, gas documentation belongs in the same preparation tier as electric.

The utility letter is the deliverable

The common failure runs like this. The director has a working relationship with the utility, knows informally that capacity exists, and assumes the selector will take that assurance. The selector needs a document: issued by the utility, signed by someone with authority, testing a stated demand at a stated location, under stated conditions, with an expiration date.

Titles are unreliable across jurisdictions. Bainbridge Island's published process draws the line explicitly: an availability letter describes capacity as of the letter date and guarantees nothing about future capacity, while a commitment follows payment and satisfaction of stated conditions and reserves capacity. Austin Water's service availability letter establishes only whether a property sits inside the service area, without incorporating proposed land use or demand. Read what the document actually does, not what it is called.

Request letters from both utilities before the RFI arrives, and have them test a demand profile consistent with the sectors the city is actually chasing. Pursuing food processing means a water letter tested against production and sanitation peaks. Pursuing heat treatment means a gas letter tested against a coincident hourly load with multiple furnaces firing.

When the RFI does arrive, the letter is the primary document. Attach it. Pull the key fields — available capacity, pressure, service class, extension timeline — into the response form so the reviewer can extract them without opening the attachment. Include a site map showing the parcel, connection point, serving main route, and distance. If the tested demand profile differs from the prospect's stated requirements, say so, and give the timeline for an updated determination.

This is the counterparty problem from "You Don't Own the Answers." The EDO does not control the water utility's capacity or the gas utility's tariff. What it controls is when the question gets asked. Ask it in advance and you have a document to forward on the day the RFI lands. Ask it after, and you have a phone call and a two-week gap while the reviewer moves on to the next binder.